The Angel
by Anonymousgiraffe
Summary: The first time Simon sees Baz, he's eleven.
1. Chapter 1

The Angel

The first time Simon sees Baz, he's eleven.

Baz is playing the violin. He bends his head. His eyes are closed. It's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and truthfully, it's shit.

Simon doesn't care.

He's enthralled. This tall, skinny boy, all knees and elbows, his black hair cut too long, is something other than the words Simon struggles with so much. He's the rocky, haphazard motion of the music, the purr and squeak of the strings. He's horsehair and rosin and maple.

Everyone else Simon's met has been blatantly, arrogantly at ease with words.

 _One_ with words.

Baz is different. He makes Simon see: when you're made of music, no matter how rocky and haphazard, there's no room for words.

The second time Simon sees Baz, he's thirteen.

He's come back to the park nearly every day. But since that first afternoon, two years ago, there's been no sign of the other boy.

Now he's back again. Older. Sharper. Ill-fitting. His limbs gangle, and the violin's small in his hand. He's cut his hair shorter, coming to a peak at his forehead.

He plays Beethoven's Ninth again. Competently. A little jerky. He looks impatient, and the way he handles the bow is rougher than it probably should be. When he finishes, he throws the violin down, and it rings.

"Don't," Simon says, appalled.

Baz turns. A marionette, as jerky as his music. He folds his lanky arms across his chest and raises a single threatening eyebrow.

"Who're you?" he snaps.

Simon just looks at him.

"Who're you?"

A silent struggle. Flirting with the words. "Simon."

"Simon?"

Simon nods. "You—shouldn't." He jabs a finger towards the violin.

"Drop it?"

Another nod.

Baz picks the violin up. "It's none of your business what I do."

Simon watches him. Older. Sharper. Ill-fitting. He thinks of the music, and of Baz's chin crooked over the bow, and of the way all the words went somewhere else, and he didn't have to think about them.

"Can I—"

"Spit it out," Baz says, after a beat.

Simon points to the violin.

"Play it?"

Nod.

"What is _wrong_ with you? Do you not speak English?"

Simon lifts his chin. "I'm not—good. With words. I can't say what—what I want."

Baz looks at him. Considers.

"I'm Baz," he says.

"Nice to meet you, Baz," Simon says, clearly.

It's the way he says it that gets to Baz.

The simplicity of it. How he's obviously been practicing.

Two boys are standing in a park. The dark and the light. The good and the bad.

There's never really been a question.

The devil hands his violin to the angel.

The third time Simon sees Baz, he's seventeen.

There's no violin. No park. They're standing in line for coffee, one behind the other.

"Simon?"

Simon turns.

The look on Baz's face is like Christmas has come early.

"It _is_ you!"

A smile. A quick look up and down. Baz has filled out. He's less skinny now, less at odds with himself. His dark hair's falling in his face, over his gray eyes.

"Hi," Simon says, softly.

When they've both gotten their coffees, exchanged pleasantries and hot sleeves, and asserted they each have nowhere better to be, they walk.

It's such a coincidence, Baz keeps saying. Over and over again. What a coincidence I bumped into you here. What a coincidence I still remembered your name.

Simon smiles a small private smile to himself. It's not a coincidence at all, he thinks, because this morning he was humming Ode to Joy.

"So tell me," Baz says, as they wait for the crossing light to change. "Did you start playing?"

Simon shakes his head.

"You should. You were good."

They both laugh. He was not good. He squeaked the bow across the strings for a while, and waited for music to come, and when none did, he handed the violin back to Baz and walked away.

"Did you like it, though?"

Simon nods. Finds the words. "It made me feel—I had a voice."

They're caught up in the crowd. Swept across the street. Baz braces his tall frame to shield Simon from the jostle.

"Seventeen—you're seventeen, too, right? Seventeen isn't too late to start."

"No teacher."

"I could recommend one for you."

Simon thinks it over for a second. Then remembers. His face contorts. "No. No—no money."

His stutter, for once, isn't because of the way the words clot up in his throat. It's embarrassment. He knows his face is turning red.

"Not because—I'm stupid. Didn't throw it away. Just—don't have any. Enough."

"I know. It's okay."

Simon scalds his tongue on his coffee and says nothing.

"You know…" Baz says. "I could teach you."

A vehement shake of Simon's head.

"I want to teach. I'd do it for free. I need experience if I'm going to volunteer at the community center."

"Can't let you."

"Yes, you can. Look, give me your number. I'll text you."

They lose the crowd and find a bench. Baz has napkins and a pen in his pocket. Bent over, tracing his number a digit at a time, he looks nothing like his scrawny, uncomfortable teenage self. He's confident and pleasant. Strong and defined.

Simon looks at his own napkin and fights to concentrate.

They meet every Tuesday. First in the park. Then in Baz's flat. He lives with his father and stepmother, but they're rarely home.

Simon graduates from C major scales to Hot Cross Buns, and from Hot Cross Buns to the Surprise Symphony. The bow feels natural in his hands. He's the rocky, haphazard motion of the music, the purr and squeak of the strings. He's horsehair and rosin and maple.

They don't talk much. Baz doesn't push him.

On the eleventh lesson, the first week he's met Baz twice, Simon puts down the violin, looks at Baz, and says, without a trace of a stutter, "Thank you. Thank you for all of this."

Baz turns eighteen a day after the sixteenth lesson. Simon buys him cherry scones and ginger beer, and they sit in Baz's room eating and drinking in the evening shout of the city. Baz on the bed. Simon on the floor.

"How long until your birthday?" Baz asks him.

"Solstice."

"Winter?"

Simon shakes his head.

"Two months, then. Are you going to uni?"

The question's so casual, so curious, that it hurts.

(This devil all full of music.)

(This lucky, lucky boy.)

"No."

Baz doesn't say anything else. Simon knows him well enough, though, that he can read the query in his eyes.

"Orphan," Simon says, in a small voice.

A beat.

"I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"Don't."

"Are you adopted?"

"Orphanage. They're nice. Try to—help kids, give money, but—they don't have enough. I can't pay. No work. Not smart enough for scholarship. Dumb kid—with his stutter."

Another beat. It's one of the longest things Simon's ever said.

"That's not what you are."

Simon looks at the popcorn ceiling. Then at Baz's slim legs in their well-fitting dark jeans. "Use your words," he says bitterly.

"You don't have to. Not around me."

(The devil and the angel, standing in the park. And the moment where the violin touched both of their hands and the devil and the angel bled into one.)

"Sorry," Simon whispers.

"Why?"

"Ruined—your birthday."

"You didn't."

(The devil and the angel, in the same park, embracing. And the moment where all the words vanished and there was just the way the angel felt, pressed up against the devil's chest.)

"Simon," Baz says. "You didn't."

Simon goes with Baz when he gets a tattoo. A treble clef on his ankle.

"Do you want to stop taking lessons?" Baz asks, when they're walking home. "I don't have much more to teach you. You picked it up so fast."

He's limping a little, and his jeans are rolled up to show the bandage, and in the brash limelight of the city, he's not a devil anymore. He's just a boy. A tall, beautiful, dark-haired boy, his whole body filled to the brim with music.

What a coincidence I bumped into you here. What a coincidence I still remembered your name.

(But I would never forget your name.)

Simon says, "Can we still—"

"Meet?"

A nod.

"Of course. Always."

"And play together."

"I'd like that."

Simon looks at Baz, and Baz is already looking back.

"I'd like that a lot," Baz says.

The solstice comes. At midnight, Simon leaves the orphanage and doesn't look back. Doesn't even stop to gather his papers. They'll mail the important ones to him later.

He walks. He walks. It's one o'clock in the morning, and he's eighteen years of age.

He's finally free.

He sleeps at Baz's. In the morning, they go to get Simon a job. He ends up at a Starbucks, working six-hour shifts five days a week.

For the time being, he's going to stay with Baz. Baz's parents are on sabbatical in Africa for three months, and there's a guest room where Simon can sleep.

There are happy birthdays. There are tears.

And then, later, after they've gone out for dinner and walked in spiraling trails through the park, there are more cherry scones. More ginger beer and violins.

Baz's playing has mellowed out in the six years since Simon's met him. Now his tone is perfect, the ring of his notes crystal-clear. When he goes to uni, he'll be majoring in classical music performance.

They play for a few minutes, Simon sunk into one of Baz's stepmother's wood-backed chairs. Baz stands, one heel braced against his shin. They play Beethoven's Ninth, overlapping. Harmony. Simon's part is simpler than Baz's.

Baz plays like he has nothing to lose.

His eyes are closed. His head is bent. His chin thrusts out, strong and graceful.

And it hits Simon, then, all at once. Dizzying, and everywhere.

This.

This love.

He stumbles, and his movement breaks a string.

Baz's eyes come open. He swings his violin down from his shoulder and looks expectantly at Simon.

"Um. String."

"I have extras. Let me—"

But he doesn't move. He just stands, elegant posture sagging, violin propped on socked foot.

Simon looks at Baz.

Baz looks at Simon.

(The devil and the angel, standing in a fourth-floor flat. And the moment where the broken music still rang out and there was nothing big enough to describe the sudden depth of the angel's heart.)

"Baz—" Simon says.

And over him:

"Simon—"

And then they're rushing together. The violins caught between them, the city noise ignored.

"Simon—"

"Baz—"

All of Baz's words, all of Baz's music, bleeding into Simon. Hurried and wild and soft and assured.

There's never really been a question.


	2. Epilogue

The Epilogue Cherrypie2sdayssuck Asked For

Years go by.

There are winters and summers and springs. There are silent nights and hot, oppressive London days. There are cherry scones on birthdays and violins underneath the stars.

Baz goes to uni immediately, but Simon elects to wait a year. They get a flat together that Baz can come home to for the holidays. It's south of London. The air smells like fruit, down there, and there's a little path that winds its way down to the water.

Simon's in love. He's in love with the flat and the fruit and the little path. He's in love with the way his violin sounds without the city air. It's clear as anything. It echoes.

He thinks he's in love with Baz.

"Are you going to bed?"

When Simon looks up, Baz is at the base of the stairs. He's wearing dark jeans and a T-shirt and when he tilts his head like that the long white column of his throat is exposed.

Simon says, "Yeah."

"Can you stay up a little longer?"

Simon looks at him again. He's got one hand on the banister and one braced flat on the wall, so his arms block the stairway. Simon can see the wings of his collarbone through his shirt.

"The fire's not out yet," Baz says, like that's an excuse.

Simon puts his armful of books on the coffee table.

"Simon-"

(The devil and the angel, standing in a first-floor flat. And that moment when all the words choked at the base of the angel's throat and the only thing he could think to say was )

Baz is crossing the room.

"You don't have to stay up. I just thought that maybe-"

Simon puts out a hand. Blindly. He touches Baz's shoulder, his collarbone through the thin fabric of his jersey.

There's so much silence in the little flat.

(Air that smells like fruit and the way Baz's breath shudders through him.)

I think I love you, Simon thinks, but he's not sure how to say it.

And then they're embracing. Stepping forward so easily into each other's arms. It feels like a question, and an answer. The sort of exchange that starts, _Why didn't we do this before?_

Every time they touch, it feels new.

Simon puts his head on Baz's shoulder and Baz tightens his arm across Simon's back and says, "Are you okay?"

"I'll. Stay up," Simon says.

"You don't have to."

"Want."

"So do I."

Simon moves his head from Baz's shoulder, and Baz tilts his head down and they kiss. It's soft and hesitant. Clumsy and unsure. Simon's hand comes up to trace Baz's jaw.

When they come apart, Baz says, "If you hadn't been in the park, that day-"

Simon hums the first five notes of Ode to Joy.

"Simon, I love you."

Simon stops. They look at each other.

(The devil and the angel, standing in a first-floor flat. And that moment when nothing moved at all)

"Baz," Simon says.

Stutters. Stumbles.

He hates his voice. He curses it.

"I-I-I-"

Baz waits. His eyes are gentle. All of him is gentle. His hands are linked at Simon's back and he's looking down at him with such exquisite tenderness.

"I love you."

When it does come out it's the clearest that anything he's ever said has been. And the look in Baz's eyes is like he's falling.

(The devil and the angel, standing in a first-floor flat. And that moment when the world turned its back and for a second they were unmonitored, unwatched. They were infinite and gorgeous and alive)


End file.
